


Give Me Your Eyes

by RocketRabbits



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, No closure for the grumpy old man!, Richie tries really hard to visualize a better ending and Cant, third person present tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-15 00:10:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocketRabbits/pseuds/RocketRabbits
Summary: If he closes his eyes and tries with all his might, he still can't imagine it going any other way.





	Give Me Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I dont like Eddie Lives Fics because sometimes you dont get closure! People you love die before you get to tell them and you live with that forever

In those moments, with Eddie's head held firmly in the crook of Richie's trembling neck, he doesn't think about any other circumstances. In that moment, in the cave down the well under the house on Neiboldt street, Richie only cries, only begs Eddie to be okay and alive, dear fucking God, Eddie, please be alive. There, where Richie breathes hard enough for both of them, the clown's tangible filth curdled in the valleys between his fingers, he holds his best friend closely, tightly, and while Richie wishes that he would, Eddie doesn't breathe; their heartbeats don't sync, weak arms don't loop around Richie's shoulders, shaking hands don't grip at his jacket. He wishes they would. Lord almighty, Richie Tozier hasn't ever wished for anything harder in his entire fucking life, but he doesn't imagine that it happens. Beverly shakes him, everyone calls for him, and Richie Tozier lets Eddie Kapsbrak go.

When Neiboldt collapses, Richie's heart doesn't go with it. 

Richie Tozier is not a romantic man. He never has been, and he doesn't imagine he ever will be. He loses his best friend again, for real this time, and he breaks down completely. That's the thing, about not being a romantic: he can't joke the way they do, can't think about how Eddie would have acted or what he would have done, because in theend, Eddie wasn't there to do it. Richie'd lived the better part of his life without him, of course, without all of them, but now that they're all together again, Eddie's absence aches, differently than Stan's does.

On the kissing bridge, where he re-carves their initials carefully, tenderly, Richie wishes he were a romantic man. He thinks he loves Eddie, thinks he always has, deep down, but no matter how hard he tries, the only thing he's got in his mind is the way Eddie felt dying, the way Eddie felt dead. There's no life in the memory, no way to twist it, no way to comfort himself. There's no scenario where anything played out differently, where they met again under better circumstances, where Richie held on tightly for nicer reasons. He wishes he were better at imagining happy endings, but he wishes a lot of things. He wipes the wood shavings away from the scratchy E and lets his fingers linger there, where the wood lies dead beneath them. 

Richie goes back to California. People ask him what he left so suddenly for. Strangers ask him if he's doing alright. His manager asks him what fucked him up so badly. "A bunch of losers I knew in middle school," he says. "I'm fine," he says. "Get off my dick about it," he says.

Richie spends a lot of nights now acutely aware of how empty his bed is. He did that before, sometimes, when he was really drunk, but now he does it sober. He was lonely before, but now that he remembers not being lonely, it's colder than it'd ever been. How was he okay with a bed, a life that empty? Sometimes he thinks about trying to pick up women, and sometimes when he's braver he thinks about trying to pick up men, but he never actually moves.

Sometimes, when it's four am and he hasn't slept at all, he tries to think about Eddie. Usually thinking about Eddie is why he hasn't slept, and why his hands are scrubbed raw trying to remove blood that hasn't been there for months. Usually he can't close his eyes when he thinks about Eddie, or all he'll think about is the blood on his glasses and a hole where Eddie's torso should be.

Richie isn't a romantic man, but he wishes he could change it, if only in his head. Sometimes he tries to imagine a version of events where he kisses him, there, knowing Eddie is dying. Sometimes he tries to imagine one where they kiss and nobody dies and Eddie is beautiful and Richie ruins everything by saying Eddie kisses better than his mother, but it's always hard to visiualize. He wishes they'd happen, but he can't quite picture them.

Sometimes, he thinks about Eddie there with him, just sleeping, taking it slow despite all the jokes. He's divorced, and they don't live together, because as much as Richie thinks he could have tried to be a romantic, if Eddie had wanted him to, he can't fathom domesticity, not yet. Not ever.

He tries to think about it, on nights like these, before giving up and swallowing a handful of melatonin tablets dry. No point in trying to make himself imagine it when Eddie won't ever be there to test it.


End file.
